Solution

Results

Problem Overview

A leader in the electronic interconnect industry, Samtec has more than 40 locations
around the world, and they keep growing.

However, five years ago - when Samtec had just 30 locations - the company realized they had a serious problem with telecom, from carrier billing errors to never-ending trouble tickets. If Samtec wanted their growth to continue, they had to find a telecom solution.

A Need for Central Management

“Everything about our telecom seemed to be disorganized,” said Samtec’s Global IT Operations Director Bryan Proctor. “Despite having great people taking care of IT, everything was all over the place. There was no central management for bills and contracts.” While mismanaged telecom is so common that many companies accept it as part of doing business, Samtec decided to do something about it.

"We had two employees working on our telecom services, but without connections and inside carrier knowledge, they didn’t get very far,” Proctor explained. “It was difficult just to get a trouble ticket resolved. We needed a better solution.”

Samtec’s telecom was a gray area, and the company had no concrete idea of how this gray area was affecting the company’s bottom line. Billing confusion, constricting contracts, unresolved problem tickets, and unsatisfactory responses from carriers were interfering with business and eating up profits. Samtec realized that even when their in-house team was performing at its best, carrier processes, procedures, and billing made it impossible to untangle and resolve issues.

They knew they were wasting dollars, but Samtec had no perspective on exactly how many. “One of our consulting partners told us to consider Outsourced Telecom Management,” Proctor said.

Solution

Having industry experts to discover, diagnose, treat, and manage all telecom sounded like a smart choice. It became clear that using Digital Direction’s Outsourced Telecom Management (OTM) was a logical step for Samtec. “Once we learned about OTM, we saw all the ways it could help us,” Proctor explained. “It sounded like exactly what we needed to eliminate the barriers we kept hitting.” The company engaged with Digital Direction to sort out their telecom issues.

The Important First Steps

The first step Digital Direction took was the most crucial: Quickly becoming Samtec experts. The Digital Direction team immersed themselves in Samtec’s business and industry, inside and out. This discovery process gave Digital Direction a driver’s-seat view of problem areas and savings opportunities. “They know us well, and got to know us so fast,” Proctor said. “Almost right away, we felt like we had an expert team on our staff.” A healthy, transparent partnership with Samtec gave Digital Direction the information they needed to start the quickly growing company on the road to a better-managed, cost-saving telecom experience.